“If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it.” (Sitting Bull). This pilot project locates Lakota historical, cultural and recreational areas. Lakota Land includes establishing a geodatabase, setting up an online interactive map, supporting the formation of a committee to handle sensitive site and investigating links of Native sites with geospatial features, such as water or mountains.

Historic Sites for 2006

Rationale for the Lakota Land Project

b) to advance the understanding of geospatial technology to a broad Native American public

c) to foster Native identity

d) to provide a tool for tribal decision making

e) to educate Native and non-native communities

f) to provide a database for researchers of Native culture/history

g) to offer alternatives to socio-economic problems

h) to research geospatial patterns to identify additional sites

This project has a broad impact. It already involves the community, tribal pre-college and undergraduate geoscience education. Volunteers and students will interview community members and acquire GPS coordinates of Native American sites and map them as well as research their importance. This program helps reservation residents to enter and advance in geoscience careers.

This project has the intellectual merit of increasing the understanding of geoscience by tribal residents. We will develop unique procedures for documenting Lakota cultural sites: a working database and an interactive online map of sites approved for publication. This map will be a tool to acquaint tribal and nontribal members with geospatial technology, Lakota values and culture.